Personal watercraft are small self-propelled boats that are used by one or two persons. One such type of personal watercraft are jet skis which are propelled by jets of water and are equipped with water pumps for propulsion. When not in use, it is desirable to store such jet skis out of the water and on a dock or cradle and not on a beach where the water pump and propeller could pickup debris.
Since jet skis are very heavy, ordinarily weighing somewhere between 230 to 450 pounds or so, some sort of lifting apparatus is needed to lift the jet ski out of the water and up onto a dock, and to lower the jet ski off the dock and into the water. Various prior art dock lifts have been employed heretofore to lift small boats and jet skis up out of the water but they have generally been unable to move the watercraft onto the dock and instead leave the watercraft positioned out over the water and not over the dock. This is disadvantageous because jet skis must be removed from the lift to be stored. However, because jet skis are inherently heavy in weight, they are difficult to move horizontally from a position on a lift cradle out over the water and onto the dock. Moreover, servicing the jet ski while it is located out over the water on prior art boat lifts is clumsy and difficult, requiring the servicing operator to lean out from the dock and over the water. Also, unlike large sized boats, jet skis are too small to climb on board for some types of servicing which is best performed when not on board the jet ski. Many of the prior art boat lifts, moreover have been of complicated and expensive construction some involving power driven lift and lowering means for the watercraft.